Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The film opens during a Senate committee meeting in which a prospective Secretary of the Navy candidate is being interviewed. The future SecNav is being grilled by Senator Lillian DeHaven (played by Anne Bancroft), who asks the candidate why there aren’t more women in prominent roles in the armed forces. Later on, Senator DeHaven orchestrates an agreement whereby a female officer of her choosing will undergo SEAL training alongside male candidates. If the woman successfully completes training, then more positions for females will open up throughout the Navy.

Senator DeHaven picks Lieutenant Jordan O’Neill (Demi Moore), who currently works in the intelligence division. O’Neill is selected because she seems physically capable of handling the training and because she is good-looking. She’ll become a poster girl for women in the military if she succeeds. When Jordan is told of the offer, she readily agrees.

The film then shifts into scenes that are more or less obligatory here: first, the rest of the SEAL candidates despise Jordan and resent her presence because they have to do things a bit differently when she’s around. There are a couple of guys who deliberately try to sabotage her training, and when the Master Chief (Viggo Mortensen) catches them, he punishes them, which only increases the resentment. And of course, there’s endless footage of the candidates undergoing grueling training exercises.

As the film progresses, we see that Senator DeHaven really has no wish to see Jordan succeed. In fact, the senator organizes a smear campaign that results in Jordan being accused of “fraternizing” (i.e. having a lesbian relationship) with another female officer. Jordan is to be assigned desk duty until the charges are investigated. After that, she can try Basic Training again — from the beginning.

From there, we see how Jordan gets to the bottom of Senator DeHaven’s plot, strong-arms her way back into SEAL training, goes on a real mission with her classmates, and graduates as a Navy SEAL.

My Reaction: I remember seeing G.I. Jane when it first came out 12 years ago, and I remember wanting so badly to like it. Demi Moore was one of my favorite actresses back then, and she played such a kick-ass character here that I just hoped the plot held up for two hours. It didn’t then, and it didn’t when I recently had my second viewing. In fact, I felt almost the exact same emotions this time around: wanting to like it, looking for any solid reason to like it… and yet coming up just a bit short.

First of all, I appreciated Jordan’s resilience and toughness, but I think the screenplay took those qualities a little too far past the point of believability. For instance, I can see why she would want totally equal treatment and would refuse to take advantage of a booster step or a closer starting line. But to want to sleep in the same barracks and use the same head as the men? Uh, yeah right. Having separate bunks for men and women is not quite the same as having separate starting lines or testing standards, is it? I didn’t see the point of that, and I started disliking Jordan more and more with each outburst/attempt to assert her equality — which she apparently took to mean “manliness”.

Another thing I didn’t like about the film was the way the training exercise turned into a real mission. Didn’t that already happen in Top Gun? At least in Top Gun, the pilots used flight maneuvers and strategies that they learned during training, so the audience was prepared for the moves and accepted that they could be accomplished. In G.I. Jane, however, all we saw was how the candidates had to suffer through a couple weeks of extreme physical abuse. Yet when they were suddenly thrust into the “mission”, they acted like seasoned vets who knew exactly what kind of strategy to employ to trap the enemy. It rang completely false for me. Sure, some of the SEAL candidates might have had actual combat experience prior to that, but Jordan was a desk jockey before, and now here she was leading a rescue mission like a pro.

Overall, there were just too many problems with G.I. Jane to allow me to call it a good movie. The first half was interesting and engrossing, but the Senator’s plot and then the Libyan mission kind of ruined the story for me. I give this film 2 stars out of 5.